Just swish the french press in the lake water and you are done! (See what I mean, I'm such a guy)

First world problems, my man: I have a 40' cat. Observe the tiny picture above - Handsome Husband, next to the boat there, is 6'1". Boat has got some freeboard, yeah. Swishing would involve me leaving the cabin, crossing the 'pit, walking down the transom steps, dumping/swishing, going back up the steps, back across the 'pit, back into the cabin.

Or I can just open the under-sink cabinet in my galley, and pop the puck o'grinds into my trash can inside the cabinet.

When I had the 27' trimaran, I would have swished. Naw, I didn't even have a stove for coffee (too much weight) - I drank canned coffee aboard the trimaran. Come to think, I think you've also got a thread about small-boat provisioning... the (hate to say) Starbucks Doubleshot espresso in the tiny cans are pretty good and they're small

For our pocket cruiser, I insisted on a porta potti. The small camping toilet paper holders and a small bottle of hand sanitizer fit in the built in cup holders behind the porta potti.

We froze camel bag type water bags (the kind that go in backpacks). Hang one up on an extra cleat in the morning and you just might still have cool water at the hottest part of the day. If not, you will have hot water, so check before sipping.

We tried using a collapsible 5 gallon container for our extra water (no built in tank), but it sprang a leak. We replaced it with two 2.5 gallon collapsible containers, but one of them had a leak when we bought it. We eventually just used one gallon jugs.

We never used the built in cabin light: we used a lawn mower sized battery that could just handle the fish/depth finder and the anchor lights for a long weekend. For lighting, we used small LED lanterns. One reason for the smaller battery was that I could lift it, so we could take it home to charge it.

If you don't have any means of cooking, hard boiled eggs and precooked bacon make a hearty breakfast. Sandwiches are the easiest thing to eat under way in any size vessel.

We installed a small plastic basket on the bulkhead beside the companionway. This was originally meant for toiletries, but it ended up being perfect for certain things we wanted to keep inside, but readily accessible, like the camera.

We added a rail mount cup holder to the stern rail. I got the closest image by googling "Cabelas cup holder," but I didn't find a good link.

We attached a small bike handlebar bag to the railing to hold items in the cockpit. It was a good place for snacks without having to go below - especially important when conditions have spray coming over that tiny pocket cruiser deck and requiring you to have the hatch closed as much as possible.

Our pocket cruiser has a fuel locker. Since we use very little fuel, we only put a one gallon tank in there. This left room for a small tackle bag that we kept our sail ties and sailing gloves in. The Precision 18 doesn't have winches, so gloves are important, especially that day we went on a very narrow lake. I could literally take one bite of my sandwich between tacks.

The bimini was only good for lunch breaks. We started sailing on Texas lakes and thought the bimini would revolutionize our summer weekends. It very nearly put us in the drink when we healed over and it caught the wind just as the sail was spilling it!

The one thing we really wished we had that one time was pants. We had been sailing all summer worried about how to cool off, then Thanksgiving came and the sun went down and we crawled into bed by 7 because we had forgotten to pack pants.

When we are on the hook or a mooring, my wife wants a curling wand . We have a small inverter , we both know it won't handle a wand . She was thinking about one of those butane types , they make me nervous . So my question , curling wand users what do you use ? Sorry if this has been discussed but this is a long thd.

When we are on the hook or a mooring, my wife wants a curling wand . ...

Pretty much I try not to end the trip looking like one of those little troll figurines that you twirl between your fingers and its hair stands straight up. But it looks like you can get just about anything in 12V:

When we are on the hook or a mooring, my wife wants a curling wand . We have a small inverter , we both know it won't handle a wand . She was thinking about one of those butane types , they make me nervous . So my question , curling wand users what do you use ? Sorry if this has been discussed but this is a long thd.

A good working head that's clean and private.
A galley that's clean and comfortable to use.
A clean boat interior with a comfortable berth to sleep on.
A good place to lounge at anchor (a hammock is great, but even a nice couple of cushions that can be propped on deck).
Cockpit cushions and some shade (awning or bimini) for hot days at anchor

Those would be my basics. The boat doesn't have to be big, but clean and tidy.

My wife hates sleeping in hot, muggy weather. She has started to realize that it's usually cooler on the water, but the fear factor of a miserable night was a hindrance to going out for a whole week. To soothe her fears, I pulled a nice window air conditioner that we had stored in the basement for many years. It has a couple handles for transporting, and a plastic case so it doesn't scratch up the fiberglass. It fits perfectly in the companionway hatch, with our canvas cover draped around it.

I would never leave it there permanently, but just having it available to pull out in the event of a hot night eliminated my wife's resistance to heading out for a whole week. Obviously we watch the weather forecast while underway, and if there's a real hot night forecast, we find a marina with shore power for that night.

We only used it one night last summer, but on that particular night it made all the difference for her. And for one or two nights per summer, it's definitely not worth installing a permanent AC system.

By choosing to post the reply above you agree to the rules you agreed to when joining Sailnet.
Click Here to view those rules.

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the SailNet Community forums, you must first register. Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.Please note: After entering 3 characters a list of Usernames already in use will appear and the list will disappear once a valid Username is entered.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.